Millennials in 2014: Take My Car, Not My Phone

Anyone who knows someone born in the 1980s and beyond is used to seeing their heads bowed over their mobile devices. Now, a new study of attitudes among millennials makes it official: their phone means more than a car.

The study, commissioned by
Zipcar, the car-sharing company, and provided exclusively to Forbes on Friday, shows that nearly 40 percent of millennials believe that losing their phone would be a bigger hardship than losing their automobile. They also believe it would be a greater tragedy (so to speak) than losing access to a desktop or laptop computer, or a TV set.

That compares with only 16 percent of people age 35 and up who think losing their phones would be more difficult to take than losing access to those other things. In fact, more than 40 percent of people 35 and up believe losing their cars would be the hardest aspect of their lives to give up. Only one-quarter of the millennials surveyed agreed that a car comes first.

Millennials also say that that their use of phones and other mobile devices is allowing them to cut back on their driving. About 40 percent of them say they substitute texting, email, video chats such as Skype or
Google Hangout for meeting up with friends in person, according to the study.

"We’re seeing all generations connected to the smartphone, but we’re seeing it in millennials especially," Mark Norman, Zipcar's president, said in an interview.

Zipcar has been tracking millennials' attitudes since 2010, a decade after it launched its business allowing members to rent cars by the hour. This year's survey included 1,009 adults, aged 18 and up, including 955 licensed drivers. The study was weighted to reflect American demographic trends.

The automobile industry has been deeply interested in millennials' attitudes towards driving and cars, since these youngsters are showing less interest in getting a driver's license than previous generations. (Of the millennials who took part in the Zipcar survey, 17 percent did not have a driver's license.)

The survey confirmed what a number of experts have theorized: faced with high student loan bills, and diminished opportunities to land jobs, many millennials believe cars are too expensive for them to own, just yet.

According to the Zipcar study, 53 percent of millennials said the cost of owning a car, including insurance, gas, parking as well as payments, is out of reach for them. That compares with only 35 percent of older generations that took part in the survey. The average new car transaction price in December was nearly $33,000, according to the latest estimate from Kelley Blue Book.

More than half the millennials in the survey said they would drive less if other transportation options were available, such as public transportation, car sharing, and ride sharing. In fact, 35 percent said they are actively looking for alternatives to automobiles.

Interestingly, the survey found that mobile apps are not yet affecting many peoples' ability to decrease their driving. Only about 10 percent of those in the survey said that they were able to get around due to their reliance on mobile apps. However, about 24 percent of millennials said transportation apps are affecting their habits.

But Norman believes an increased reliance on mobile apps is one of the reasons why public transit is seeing record demand across the country. Many local transit systems have developed apps featuring everything from schedules and fares to information about delays. "Transit is much easier to use," Norman says.

Take a look at some of the findings of the Zipcar survey, and see if they match up with the millennials in your life. If you're a millennial, does the survey reflect your attitudes about your phone and your car?